Yesterday, in a post entitled, “The Corruption of Familiarity & Favoritism,” I wrote about how West Allis police officers declined to arrest a Milwaukee sheriff’s deputy found apparently drunk, passed out, behind the wheel of a parked car. An ordinary person would surely have been arrested; the deputy was allowed to walk away without punishment.
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the deputy’s first brush with disgrace:
An off-duty Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy who was unresponsive and appeared to be intoxicated when he was found behind the wheel of a car that was parked on a West Allis street last week is the same deputy who showed his badge and pleaded with a Hales Corners officer to let him go when he was arrested for drunken driving in 2008.
The deputy, identified by sources as 36-year-old Christopher P. Conell, was convicted of first-offense operating while intoxicated after his 2008 arrest.
That case began when the Hales Corners officer pulled Conell over about 12:45 a.m. March 18, 2008, after seeing Conell’s car drift across the center line three times on W. Grange Ave. near S. 110th St., according to the incident report.
The report says that before the arresting officer was able to explain the reason for the traffic stop, Conell produced his badge and said, “Come on, man, I’m like two blocks from home, just let me go. Please, please.”
Conell also said, “You can’t do this to one of your own,” according to the report.
You can’t do this to one of your own. The Hales Corners officer disregarded Conell’s shameful attempt to evade responsibility, and saw the lie of what Conell said.
The officers of Hales Corners saw the obligation before them: only the people are their own; they have no smaller group or faction that they may every place above each and every resident they serve. Those in West Allis have only embarrassed themselves and their profession.
And yet, one should not doubt that bias and preferential treatment lurk elsewhere in Wisconsin, a stain on every community so corrupted.
See, Deputy in West Allis incident flashed badge in ’08 OWI.